Planned cuts to WAAS reduced
Spending cuts to Worcestershire’s flagship archive service have been reduced by £155,000 following public opposition.
In December 2018, Worcestershire County Council’s cabinet approved a draft 2019–2020 budget that would cut the Worcestershire Archive and Archaeology Service (WAAS) funding from £700,000 to £295,000.
The Friends of Worcestershire Archives launched a petition against the cuts, which attracted 1,251 signatures. Speaking in the House of Lords, the Rt Revd Dr John Inge, Bishop of Worcester, called the cuts “a major reputational and cultural loss”.
In response, the council reduced the total cuts from £405,000 to £250,000 in the final budget, which was approved on 14 February.
Conservative councillor Lucy Hodgson, cabinet member for communities, said that WAAS would now remain “largely the same”, and wouldn’t close or reduce its opening hours.
However, she added that the council would have to “look at ways of generating income within the service”.
Roger Leake, chair of the Friends of Worcestershire Archives, told Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine that the Friends regarded the new figure “with some gratitude, but not with relief”, and thought that WAAS would still struggle to make the savings.
Labour councillor Richard Udall, who led the opposition to the cuts within Worcestershire County Council, said: “The cuts are still going to be damaging, and still going to adversely affect the future of the archives.”
He added that he thought it was “a foregone conclusion” that the council would cut the WAAS budget further. To make up the deficit, the service could need to cut staff, or charge people to deposit documents.
WAAS is located in The Hive, a £60 million facility that opened in 2012. Its documents include a 1582 bond for the marriage of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, which has been added to the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register.
The news comes at a time of general concern about the impact of spending cuts on archive services. Research from the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) shows that between 2013 and 2017 archive expenditure was cut by £10 million and 130 full-time jobs were lost, although the number of visitors increased by 1.6 million.